Terminology

2185 terms, tools, patterns and metrics an architect is expected to use precisely. Each one gets a short explanation of what it is, and — where it matters — what it is commonly confused with. Search filters as you type; the column headers sort.

All areas2185 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture89 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture81 Cost Architecture & FinOps66 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization66 AI-Era Architecture69 Software Architecture & Engineering71 Architecture Patterns71 Architecture Decision-Making63 The Architect's Meta-Skills61 Delivery & Release Engineering66 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience70 Testing & Quality Architecture66 Data Platform Architecture64 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics69 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk64

Kind Any concept785 practice729 pattern362 metric125 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

6 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Bulkhead	pattern	Bulkheads & Isolation	Partitioning resources so that exhaustion in one area cannot consume the capacity another area depends on.
Bulkheads in Practice Resource Partitioning, Compartmentalisation	pattern	Bulkheads & Isolation	Partitioning resources so one dependency's failure cannot consume what another needs, and the aggregate-sizing mistake that moves the exhaustion one layer down.
Cell Isolation	pattern	Bulkheads & Isolation	Bulkheading at the level of a complete system copy, so that any failure — including ones nobody predicted — is contained to the customers assigned to one cell.
Per-Dependency Concurrency Limit Dependency Semaphore, Downstream Bulkhead	pattern	Bulkheads & Isolation	A hard cap on in-flight calls to a specific downstream, which bounds the damage a slow dependency can do regardless of how slow it becomes - more reliable than a circuit breaker because it needs no detection.
Shuffle Sharding Virtual Sharding, Randomised Subset Assignment	pattern	Bulkheads & Isolation	Assigning each tenant a random subset of the available capacity rather than a single shard, so that any two tenants rarely share their entire subset and one tenant's failure affects almost nobody completely.
Thread Pool Isolation	pattern	Bulkheads & Isolation	Giving each downstream dependency its own pool of threads or permits, so one slow dependency cannot consume the capacity needed to serve everything else.